Thailand day 8 - Chiang Mai - Day Trek

Day 8 began early. We set the alarm and got ready and dressed and had breakfast before the shuttle picked us up at 8:30. We were going on a "1-day trek" which consisted of more individual activities than I could've imagined. We started off the day with the first stop at a butterfly and Orchid farm. It was pretty cool, but neither compared to Botanical or Calloway in Atlanta, but still a nice start. From there we visited our first hilltribe, the Long Neck Karen tribe. In this tribe, it is considered beautiful to have a long neck, and so from the age of 5, all the females put brass rings around their neck, and gradually add more rings as they get older. Most of the tribe lives in Burma, but this smaller portion immigrated here about a year ago. We got some amazing pictures, and I'll post those soon. From there we went Elephant riding. We hopped an elephant, and Leah nearly died of fear. She must've said "oh my god" 30 times in a row as we were descending the first steep hill. A local corrected her and said "no! 'oh my Budda!'" Riding the elephant through the hills, trees, and river was pretty cool, and then when we were done, we fed the elephants some bananas, and then had lunch ourselves. It was a quick buffet lunch, but the food was good. After lunch, we visited the second hilltribe, who had immigrated here 5 years ago by foot from southern China. For the rest of the day we were wet. We first went to the waterfall, where it started raining as soon as we started the walk from the car. by the time we got there, though, the rain had lessened to a drizzle, and we took a dive into the water. Leah and I slid down the natural rock slide, and got a "massage" from the quickly running water in the falls. Soaking, we went back to the van for the short drive to white water rafting. We took a 30-40 minute rafting trip down the river, and although there were not too many rapids, it was pretty fun. The one eyed raft captain had a little thing for leah, and kept throwing her out of the boat. We didn't even get out of the water after the rafting, because we then boarded some bamboo rafts. The river isn't exactly the most pristine, clean river, but it was a nice day out, and we enjoyed the ride. Phew. We had a long day of doing stuff! we all piled into the van for the ride back to the hotel when we got a surprise stop at a place where they make paper out of elephant dung. Yummy.
Tonight we'll hit up the night bazaar again, perhaps for a bit longer than before